This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Reflecting on the Komagata Maru, 100 years later

May 23, 2014, marks 100 years since the SS Komagata Maru, a chartered Japanese ship, arrived in Vancouver harbour. On board were 376 immigrants from British India, our fellow British subjects.

The passengers were calling the Empire on its promise of equality, fair play and justice. Two months later, with the exception of 22 who could prove prior Canadian domicile, the would-be immigrants were turned away and escorted out of Vancouver harbour by a Canadian warship, HMCS Rainbow.

The Komagata Maru passenger ship in Vancouver's English Bay in May 1914. (File photo)

The Komagata Maru “incident” was not, as is claimed repeatedly, a dark chapter in Canadian history, nor was it incidental. It was a manifestation of a “white Canada” policy — a set of selective legislations, regulations and agreements that effectively prevented non-European immigration to Canada for a century.

The Komagata Maru held up a mirror to Canada, asking what kind of country the Dominion wanted to become. By turning away the would-be immigrants, the judiciary agreed that Canada did have the right to discriminate against fellow British subjects on the basis of race.

The then-leader of the opposition, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, perhaps summed it up best when in a parliamentary debate on Asian immigration in October 1914, he said: “The people of Canada want to have a white country, and certain of our fellow subjects who are not of the white race want to come to Canada and be admitted to all the rights of Canadian citizenship . . . These men have been taught by a certain school of politics that they are equals of British subjects; unfortunately they are brought face to face with the hard facts when it’s too late.”

Article Continued Below

The hard facts are that from 1867 to 1967, Canadian immigration policy was designed to build a “white man’s country.” In 1908, it was under Laurier’s mentorship and direction, that Mackenzie King wrote and devised the continuous journey regulation of the immigration act. The regulation made no reference to race or nationality; it required all immigrants to come to Canada by continuous journey from their country of birth or nationality.

The open secret, known to Canada and its imperial overlords in London is that this regulation was aimed at South Asians coming to Canada from British India. Canada’s sister colony, Australia, had announced a “White Australia” policy, which had caused great unease in the Punjab. The worst fear of the British was an uprising in the main recruiting grounds of the British Indian Army, “the sword arm of the British Empire,” which was likely if Canada openly discriminated against people from British India.

The South Asians who had been arriving in Canada were Punjabi, many were veterans, and the others had clan if not family ties to the army. The imperial authorities agreed whole-heartedly “that Canada must remain a white man’s country is seen necessary on moral and political grounds.”

Legal scholar Audrey Macklin points out that the continuous journey regulation was more absolute in its goals of keeping out South Asians than the Chinese Exclusion Act. In my view, this regulation is also a prime example of how systems are designed to exclude people, seemingly fair on the face of it, with the true intention hidden between “a nudge and wink.”

The six or seven thousand South Asians previously landed and established on shore are often forgotten in the commemorative accounts. The South Asian community in British Columbia had been stripped of their right to vote, and many among them were fighting for equality and they saw the detention of the passengers on board the ship as an extension of this legal struggle.

Their lawyer, J. Edward Bird, embodied all that is claimed as “Canadian values” today — a belief in equality, human rights and the rule of law. Bird had a history of taking on cases for Asian and aboriginal clients, but with choosing to try to land the immigrants on board the Komagata Maru he crossed a line and received death threats.

While the history of the Komagata Maru is largely unknown by most Canadians, including those of South Asian origins, the systems seem to have not forgotten the successful lessons learned.

Article Continued Below

In 2002, Canada signed the Safe Third Country agreement with the U.S., which stipulates that all refugees must come directly from their country of citizenship, and if they come via a safe third country, they must apply for asylum there. The wording of this 2002 agreement is remarkably similar to that of the continuous journey regulation of 1914. The consequences, as noted by Amnesty International, have been a dramatic drop in the numbers of refugee claims via the U.S.

Another striking similarity lies in the manner in which the Tamil migrants aboard the MV Sun Sea were treated by the authorities in 2010. Like the passengers of the Komagata Maru, they were detained not on the ship but on CFB Esquimalt. Just as the passengers, who were clearly in Canadian waters, were deemed to be on the borders of Canada, so were the Tamil migrants.

Both, in effect, were contained in a legal limbo. The media were barred from direct contact with both; both were denied access to legal counsel, and in this vacuum, the government raised questions about the validity of their claims and framed them as security threats.

These events and their subsequent government responses represent a dog whistle to those who stridently oppose multiculturalism and “mass immigration” and call for a closing of the gates.

It is an often-repeated idea that Canada changed when it finally opened its gates in 1968. This begs the question, why were the gates closed and who did they keep out?

The gates kept out among many others the passengers aboard the Komagata Maru, the story of their encounter with Canada fundamentally about race. The very idea of Canada was fundamentally about race, and 100 years after the turning away of the Komagata Maru, we have to ask ourselves how much have things really changed and in what ways have they remained the same.

The commemoration of the arrival and turning away of the Komagata Maru reminds us that the question of race was central to not only who was let in to the country but also who was seen as being Canadian. This very framework continues to haunt the country 100 years later, even as immigration continues to play a central role in building Canada.

It would be a mistake to relegate the Komagata Maru to the past. As the great American writer James Baldwin reminds us, “If history were past, history wouldn’t matter. History is present . . . You and I are history. We carry our history. We act our history.” So how does Canada want to act its history when dealing with race and immigration?

Ali Kazimi is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and visual artist. Over the past two decades he has engaged with the history of immigration through a feature documentary, Continuous Journey (2004), a book, Undesirables: White Canada and the Komagata Maru (2012,) and Fair Play (2014), a 3D video installation on view at the Surrey Art Gallery until June 15, 2014.

More from The Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com